The Democrats set out to teach John Boehner and Benjamin Netanyahu a lesson. They would boycott the Israeli prime minister’s speech to Congress and apply enough pressure to cancel the speech, keep Mr. Netanyahu at home and embarrass the Republicans who invited him here. What a happy day’s work that would be.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. Such an invitation is one of the highest honors we can bestow on a foreign leader. And such a speech is normally an occasion of unity in Washington, when elected officials put partisan politics aside and come together to focus on weighty issues of national security.

Our attention these days with regard to security is understandably riveted on the Islamic State, or ISIS, and its hideous decapitations, rapes and live immolations. We must deal with the Islamic State, but it is not the gravest threat we face. The Israelis are right — we should awaken to the fact that the coming of a nuclear Iran holds special dangers and requires particularly urgent attention. There are four driving reasons.

Experienced vote counters do not believe that either the House or the Senate will muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override President Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline bill. If so, Mr. Obama’s years of delay and disingenuousness on this issue, culminating in his veto, will guarantee negative consequences for America long into the future.

A world leader giving an address to Congress shouldn’t be controversial, especially when that leader is the prime minister of a major U.S. ally — indeed, a bulwark of freedom in a deeply troubled region of the world.

Suppose there were a banquet for 100 people and at the end of the night it was time to split the bill of $50 per person. If that bill were paid for the way we pay our income taxes, here is how it would work. Those in the top half of income would pay roughly $97 each and those in the bottom half of the income would pay an average of $3 each. Almost 40 people would pay nothing. And the single richest person in the room would cough up $1,750.

Attendees of last week’s Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), the nation’s largest conference for conservatives, heard a few tried and true conservative messages from potential presidential candidates and activists alike — calls for lower taxes, more freedom for business, a strong national defense, the importance of killing the enemy and the need for a serious foreign policy.

The brouhaha over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to Congress is diverting attention from more important U.S.-Israel controversies that will escalate soon after this comparatively minor contretemps fizzles out.

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Analysts predict that the world's first trillionaire will emerge on the planet — and it may be sooner than we think. This is someone who is worth at least this much: $1,000,000,000,000. The world may appear to be in chaos, but the wealthy charge on, "despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro," reports Forbes magazine, which has identified a record 1,826 billionaires. Combined, they have a net worth of $7.05 trillion, which would pay less than half of the current federal debt. But no matter. The list includes 290 newcomers, 71 of whom hail from China.

Mr. Boehner will personally present Mr. Netanyahu with a bust of Winston Churchill. This is, after all, the prime minister's third time before both House an Senate; he also appeared in 1996 and 2011. Churchill is the only other dignitary to be triple hitter.

The world is a mess, but what will it look like a year from now? No one knows with certainty, but informed guesses can be made, in part, based on the direction of the economies in conflicted areas of the world. Global debt (including that of the United States) is now a higher percentage of global gross domestic product than it was before the Great Recession that began in December 2007, making the world increasingly vulnerable to a new financial crisis.

Although the barony held by the 7th Lord Sackville, author of this unusual family history, written under his plain first and last name, dates only from the 19th century, his clan have held grander titles and positions since Tudor times and beyond.

Along with official proclamations recognizing March as a month dedicated to women's history, the American Red Cross, reading, colon cancer awareness and consumer protection, President Obama also has issued a recognition for Irish-Americans.

I have become concerned with what I call crony Christianity. Informed people are probably familiar with the term crony capitalism. Well, crony Christianity is a take on this theme wherein the church, as an institution, tends to cater to small interest groups it does not want to offend, and it does this in a way similar to the way in which crony capitalism caters to special-interest groups that seek special favors from a larger group, whether it be the government or a large corporation.

Scott Walker had a very good week. He was the star of the beauty contest at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and the price and proof of his good fortune was the flak he took from the activists and operatives of the left and the magpies of the media. The Wisconsin governor, so the story went, is oblivious of "gender assaults" on campus.

Protocol is a valuable tool of diplomacy, but protocol must defer to harsh reality when a nation's survival is at stake. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped on protocol and President Obama's toes when he accepted the invitation of Speaker John A. Boehner to speak to the House of Representatives without the customary endorsement of the White House. We say, good for him.

It was naive of Greg Rickford, Canada's minister of natural resources, to say recently, "It is not a question of if this project [the Keystone XL pipeline] will be approved; It is a matter of when" ("Canadian government brushes off Obama Keystone veto: 'A matter of when,'" Web, Feb. 24).